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I've got both fans blowing out (hence the ducting), with passive-only intake from the back and through the grille above the CPU cooler, a Scythe Andy Samurai Master. I tried the Mini Tower, like Polypro, but Andy beat it by a good 5C presumably because of the vertical vs horizontal fans in combination with the airflow direction.

When overclocking (very occasionally), I place an ingoing fan on top of the top grille. It's controlled by Speedfan to only start up if either core of an e4400 hits 55C, which only ever happens at more than 75% load on a 60% overclock (2GHz -> 3.21GHz).

Just got HTPC hooked up yesterday. Firing up Ratatouile on the LG combo drive and hearing 5.1 LCPM on the surround system was downright orgasmic. My HTPC is also for gaming on the big screen as I do not have an Xbox or Playstation.

I made a couple of modifications since heat is a big concern inside the media cabinet. I drilled a hole in the top for the Scythe air cooler fan as well as adding another 120mm fan on the right side to pull air in. In addition I mounted a 92mm Nexus fan blowing towards the back over the sound card and pulling air from the fan blowing up from below the hard drives. The computer is just barely audible when the room is totally silent from the couch, and inaudible as soon as the TV fan kicks in (which is WAY too loud.)

Ventilation seems adequate so far. Even when under full load stress testing with Orthos my CPU temps are maxing at 55 C. GPU temps are 65-70. I ran most of the cables under the MB and optical drive so air flow is unimpeded. Its hard to tell in the picture but I removed the backing on the media cabinet so the rear is completely open (its about 8 inches from the back wall.) I'll probably replace it with stereo grill covering at some point. My only concern is summertime since we don't have air conditioning (like everyone else in Seattle) and it occasionally will get in the 90's in the house.

Yamaha your vision is better than mine. I sit the same distance and can barely read the list of threads on this website. Guess that means I'll have to get a bigger screen. 120" should do the trick I think.

I like the looks of the Ahanix mce301, 302, & 303's too. The problem I have with them is that they only accept low-profile expansion cards. Well, that, and that crazy idea of using a parallel cable to connect the VFD.
But what are you guys using for video cards and TV tuners in those slim cases?

you seem to be missing the DVD drive cover, it'd look much better with it on.

I have the mce301 in silver . It's the best looking case around, IMO. I swapped out dimmer blue LEDs for the power button, though.

I was debating with myself what to do. In order to fit the DVD drive cover flush, I would have to move the drive so far back into the case that the chassis button wouldn't reach the drive's eject button if I didn't add a spacer or something, so I never got around to mounting the cover.

After a while I decided that I think it actually looks better without the cover, besides the cover has no HD DVD logo.

I like the looks of the Ahanix mce301, 302, & 303's too. The problem I have with them is that they only accept low-profile expansion cards. Well, that, and that crazy idea of using a parallel cable to connect the VFD.
But what are you guys using for video cards and TV tuners in those slim cases?

The 303 has a USB connected VFD, IRtrans compatible. I think this is much better than the iMON variety because it works with the MCE remote out of the box and also with LCDsmartie, which allows you to completely customize what the display shows.

As far as the expansion cards go, there are now a number of low profile graphics cards good enough for 1080p HD content that makes this a non-issue. And at least here in Europe, there are several options for TV cards which are also low profile so I didn't find this much of a problem. I'm not using my HTPC for TV though since there's no HD content to speak of available on terrestrial, and MCE doesn't support the DVB-S2 standard for satellite HD.

I was debating with myself what to do. In order to fit the DVD drive cover flush, I would have to move the drive so far back into the case that the chassis button wouldn't reach the drive's eject button if I didn't add a spacer or something, so I never got around to mounting the cover.

After a while I decided that I think it actually looks better without the cover, besides the cover has no HD DVD logo.

But now that you mention it, I'm starting to think about it again...

/politby

try removing the original cover. it usually slides off the dvd with a bit of force. after that, you don't have to pus the dvd into the chassis so far and the chassis button will likely hit the eject button.

Does the harmony communicate with the IR receiver built into the Silverstone case? Did you silverstone case come with the iMoN remote control? Can you proram the harmony to control the PC? i.e. launch power dvd, control PowerDVD etc?